


Through The Wire

by shesbreathless



Series: schmico codas [16]
Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Arguing, Fluff, M/M, Shower Sex, as always I MEAN, post 16x03, the wonderful adventures of levi and the wire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-08 06:50:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21231581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shesbreathless/pseuds/shesbreathless
Summary: So, Levi has to hold onto a wire for a week. Sounds easy enough... doesn't it?





	Through The Wire

**Author's Note:**

> I'll put a disclaimer: I've had a horrible, horrible week, so it's a miracle that this fic even exists. I desperately wanted to write it, though, so here it is!
> 
> If there are any mistakes feel free to tell me, as I'm way too tired to proofread lol
> 
> Enjoy!

Day one

Levi has been working in the hospital for a while now. The seemingly endless hallways don’t confuse him anymore, and he’s stopped holding his breath every time he approaches a surgical table. He finally feels like he belongs.

He’s also definitely not new to being pushed around by his superiors. He guesses it’s okay, as an intern he fully accepted his position at the bottom of the hospital hierarchy. He’s a resident now, though, and he thought he was on his way to asserting himself.

That’s why Dr. DeLuca assigning him this absurd task comes both as a surprise and not as one at all.

“Do you need a hand?”

Levi huffs and bites his lower lip as he focuses on folding the wire in a way that will keep it from falling off the tiny shelf and down the drain.

“No,” he answers when it finally stops unravelling.

He steps back to admire his work, but he walks directly into Nico, who had apparently followed him into the bathroom.

“What are you doing?” Nico asks.

Levi doesn’t even turn around. He stays with his back pressed against Nico’s front and proceeds to wiggle out of his pants.

“I’m getting ready to take a shower.”

“I see that,” Nico chuckles, fingers wiggling to get under his shirt. “Why is that thing taking it with you, though?”

He flattens his hand over Levi’s belly and bends down to kiss the side of his neck. Levi sighs and leans back into the touch, allowing himself a few seconds to enjoy it before shrugging his way out of his shirt as well.

“Because I’m not supposed to let it out of my sight,” he explains easily.

Nico rolls his eyes. “That’s a bit extreme.”

“I’m not gonna half ass it,” Levi shrugs.

“He would literally never know if you just left it on a table when you’re here,” Nico says. It’s not the first time he’s tried to make him see reason.

“It’s the thought that counts.”

“This particular thought is ridiculous.”

Hooking his thumbs into his underwear, Levi raises one eyebrow and silently asks Nico if he wants to keep the argument going, or if he plans on joining him. Nico glances down, thinks about it for a second, and then starts taking off his own clothes.

“I don’t like that it’s just there watching us, though,” he complains.

Levi turns the water on and checks the temperature with his hand before fully stepping into the stream, closely followed by Nico.

“It’s just a piece of plastic. It can’t hurt you.”

“I’m not-“ Nico starts, but Levi kisses the rest of the sentence away.

The steam from the hot water quickly fills the room and Levi gets lost in the feeling of Nico’s wet skin pressing against his. That is, until he feels one of Nico’s hands leave his hips and never come back.

“Don’t you dare.”

He opens his eyes and, sure enough, he catches Nico with his fingers barely an inch away from the wire, smiling guiltily.

“Leave my wire alone,” Levi frowns.

“It was falling,” Nico tries to justify himself.

Levi looks at the wire. It is most definitely not falling. As an attempt at making Nico focus on him instead, he grabs Nico’s hand and guides it behind him, getting him to grab his ass.

“It’s still really weird,” Nico complains, but his free hand joins the other one in squeezing Levi’s cheeks.

“Get over it,” Levi rolls his eyes.

Nico smirks. “Make me.”

Levi knows exactly what he’s doing, but he’ll let him get away with it this time. He wiggles his hips and puts his hands on either side of Nico’s face, pulling it down so he can kiss him properly.

He squints one eye open to check that the wire is still where it’s supposed to be, then lets Nico push him against the cold tiles and sneak his knee between his thighs.

It’s all wet and slippery, but Nico’s hands are big and strong, and they keep him steady as he pushes his hips against Levi’s again and again.

They kiss until they can’t anymore, when it turns into just breathing against each other’s lips, and even then neither of them pulls away.

Levi sneaks a hand between them and adjusts them so that their cocks rub together in the most delicious way possible. Nico keeps palming and squeezing Levi’s ass, and this was never meant to last long. It’s only a matter of a few more minutes before they tense up and come almost at the same time.

“Mh, I love you,” Levi moans loudly, melting even more against Nico’s firm body.

“I’ll wash your hair for you, there’s no need to suck up now,” Nico teases him.

Levi jabs at his chest with a finger until Nico makes a pained noise and grabs his hand to stop him. Levi pouts and stares at him until he takes the hint.

“I love you too,” Nico finally says it back.

Beaming, Levi leans up to kiss him again, then steps back under the stream of water and nudges the bottle of shampoo against Nico’s hand so that he’ll use it.

Nico laughs, but still takes the bottle and gets to work. The wire stays innocently in its place.

Day three

Nico stops finding the whole wire obsession charming or cute very fast. Not even halfway through the week, Levi starts noticing the way he rolls his eyes every time he spots the wire in Levi’s general vicinity.

Levi is willing to admit that he’s going overboard with it.

He sleeps with the wire on his bedside table; it’s the last thing he sees at night and the first thing he checks in the morning. He takes it with him when he goes to the bathroom, and he stuffs it in his pocket when he goes grocery shopping. He never lets it out of his sight, just like he was told.

It’s probably kind of ridiculous, but he’s doing it as a bet with himself at this point. And maybe because Nico getting annoyed about the wire usually starts little arguments that always end with their clothes on the floor and their mouths too busy to argue.

It doesn’t last very long.

It’s a random day, after a random shift at the hospital, but for whatever reason it’s the day that the wire stops being funny and starts being obnoxious.

Levi has been waiting for Nico to come home from work for a couple of hours, curled up on the couch with a book in his lap, a pencil in his hand, and the wire on the coffee table. He’s so focused on what he’s reading that the noise of the door slamming shut makes him jump.

He lifts his head just in time to see Nico kick off his shoes, one hand on the wall to steady himself and his eyes cast down.

“Hello,” Levi says.

Nico looks up and opens his mouth to say something, but his eyes settle on the coffee table first. His expression falls and he sighs, bending down to pick up his shoes and leaving without a single word.

Levi stares at the spot he’d been standing in, frowning to himself. That was not the greeting he was expecting.

He stuffs the pencil in the book to mark the page, then sets it aside and stands up. He follows the sound of drawers opening and closing all the way into the bedroom, where Nico is doing what can only be described as throwing clothes around.

“Um,” Levi leans against the doorframe. “Hi?”

Nico barely looks up. “Careful, you left that fucking thing behind.”

Levi blinks, taken aback by Nico’s tone. He walks further into the room and sits down at the bottom of the bed, crossing his legs and picking at his thumbs as he watches Nico still pacing around the room.

“Is everything okay?” he asks.

Nico doesn’t answer. Levi feels like he’s done something wrong, but he has no idea what that’s supposed to be, and he doesn’t like it.

“Nico.”

“What?” he snaps, stopping in the middle of the room and looks at Levi expectantly.

Levi raises one eyebrow. They stare at each other without speaking for a full minute.

“Are you going to tell me what you’ve got stuck up your ass?” Levi finally breaks the silence.

Nico scoffs and changes the subject. “Seriously, aren’t you worried that stupid wire is going to grow legs and leave if you don’t check up on it?”

“So _that_’s your problem?” Levi laughs. “You’re being a jerk about _that_?”

“I’m not being a jerk,” Nico shakes his head. “I just really don’t want to deal with that today.”

Levi feels an ugly feeling swirl in his stomach at that. He could just get up and leave, come back when his head is clearer, but he doesn’t.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he tries to keep is voice as calm as possible.

Nico sighs and rubs his hands over his face. He looks tired and stressed, and something inside Levi wants to comfort him, but a bigger part of him can’t stand him just taking whatever his problem is out on him like this.

“I don’t want to see that thing anymore.”

“It’s just a wire,” Levi tries.

“No, it’s not,” Nico says, much louder than necessary. “It’s a stupid wire you keep for a stupid reason, and I can’t do stupid today.”

“Excuse me?” Levi can’t believe what he’s hearing.

Nico huffs like he’s annoyed by this whole thing. Levi is at a complete loss for words.

“You know what I mean,” Nico says, crossing his arms over his chest.

Levi has had enough. He stands up on shaky legs and looks up at Nico, who resolutely looks anywhere but back at him.

“Fuck you,” Levi says slowly and clearly.

Nico opens his mouth to answer, but Levi doesn’t give him the chance. He walks out of the room and heads directly for the front door.

He feels a pang of shame course through him when he has to stop by the coffee table to pick up the wire, but it’s overpowered by the tears threatening to fall down his face.

He lets the door slam shut behind him. Nico doesn’t follow him.

Day five

Levi manages to ignore Nico for two full days.

Nico calls him barely two hours after he leaves, but Levi doesn’t answer and eventually just turns his phone off when he retorts to texting.

He’s perfectly aware that it’s not the most mature thing to do, but he’s angry and disappointed, and he doesn’t feel like being mature. So he spends two days hiding around corners and sneaking his way through the hospital, trying his best not to bump into Nico.

It mostly works. Levi manages to avoid having to confront him and gets to focus just on his work at the same time, so it’s a win-win for everybody. It’s not really, but anything to mask the clenching in his gut when he slides the wire into the pocket on his shirt at the start of the work day.

He's on Dr. Shepherd’s service today, and he’s less than excited about it. He doesn’t really like brains.

“We have a full day of clipping aneurysms,” she’s explaining to him. “So stand up straight and stretch your fingers.”

Levi nods and fakes a smile at her, then lets her walk on as he stays behind and pretends to do something on his tablet. The last thing he wants to do is stare inside people’s heads all day, but it’s not like he has a choice.

The first surgery isn’t for another couple of hours anyway, so Levi gets to waste some time as he waits. He looks up in search of a familiar face to go bother. The first and only one he spots makes his heart jump into his throat.

Nico is leaning against a wall in a way that’s supposed to be casual, but looks anything but. Levi watches him as he tries to casually glance at Levi, eyes going wide in surprise when he realizes he’s been caught.

Levi rolls his eyes and stares him down, silently daring him take even a single step closer. He’s absolutely not above making a scene in the middle of the hallway. Nico knows that.

_Can we talk?_ he mouths without moving from his spot against the wall.

Levi raises one eyebrow, then opens his mouth to answer, but he’s interrupted by Dr. Shepherd’s head popping in from the doorway of the room Nico is standing next to.

“Schmitt, we have a head trauma coming in!”

Her pager goes off a second later and she runs out the door towards the elevators. Levi jumps into action and follows her, decidedly not looking at Nico as he walks in front of him.

A thousand thoughts run through his head at the same time. He thinks Nico might try to stop him or at least say something, but he doesn’t. Levi is almost disappointed.

That is, until he feels Nico’s finger briefly catch his as he walks by.

He turns his head so fast his neck hurts, but Nico has already walked away. Levi smiles to himself.

-

It’s not really about still being mad at Nico, Levi thinks as Dr. Shepherd happily slices into the patient’s cranium and he tries not to faint. He _really_ doesn’t like brains.

There had been more than two hundred texts from Nico waiting for Levi when he turned his phone back on. They’re not the same as a real apology, but Nico had tried to explain that he’d had a horrible day at work, and he’d called himself a ‘rude idiot’, so Levi is inclined to forgive him.

Not before making him sweat a little bit, though.

Or at least that’s the plan. He was going to go over to Nico’s place tonight and prance around naked but without allowing him to touch, just to be a little shit, but he’s forced to change his mind when he gets out of the surgery.

As soon as he steps out of his surgical gown and gets to take off his mask, Levi can tell that something’s missing. His heart falls into the bottom of his stomach and his eyes go wide as he stops abruptly in the middle of the hallway.

His hands fly down his body to pat his pockets, panic growing steadily every second he doesn’t feel the shape of the wire anywhere.

He’s actually managed to lose it. He’d gone almost a full week with the damn thing basically attached to him, even with Nico making him feel like an idiot for it, and now he’s lost it in the one place it’s going to be nearly impossible to find.

The thought of actually sneaking into a lab and getting a new wire passes through his head, but Levi knows that it would just be written on his face. He wonders if DeLuca would actually even care.

He’s spared from finding out by a nurse all but kicking him out of the room.

Levi pushes the door open and immediately trips on whatever is lying right in front of it. He catches himself with his hands on the opposite wall, looking over his shoulder to see what it is.

“Please don’t yell at me,” Nico scrambles to stand up with his hands raised in front of himself.

“I could have hit my head,” Levi says, perhaps a bit too hysterically.

Nico reaches out as if he wants to touch. Levi would honestly let him, but he still glares at him enough that he thinks twice about it. Nico’s hand drops in the space between their bodies.

“Can we talk?” Nico almost begs.

Levi thinks about making him sweat it out for a while longer, but he can still feel the panic for having lost the wire and he maybe, kind of, definitely misses him.

He leans back against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest and nods his head once as a silent way to tell Nico to start talking.

“Right,” Nico clears his throat. “I, uh. I don’t really have anything planned.”

Levi shakes his head, but he can’t hide the smile that stretches his lips. Nico’s face looks rosier than usual.

“Just,” Nico sighs. He slides a hand in his pocket and pulls something out of it. “I’m sorry.”

Confused and frowning, Levi looks at Nico’s face for some sort of an explanation, but Nico just bites his lower lip and raises his hand higher. Levi looks down at it.

“Oh.”

“Don’t make me say it, please,” Nico mumbles.

Levi watches him for a few seconds, tilts his head to the side and tries to decide if it would be so bad of him to climb Nico right here and now, in the middle of the hallway and in the middle of his shift.

He settles for plucking the wire out of Nico’s hand and examining it closely.

It looks like a bracelet, the two ends somehow tied in a neat little bow. The circle it creates is just big enough for Levi’s fist to slide through. He tightens the bow so that it sits snugly on Levi’s wrist, then looks up and notices the way Nico is looking right back at him.

“Forgive me?” he asks. “Please?”

Levi smiles. “Buy me lunch and I might think about it.”

Nico beams. He offers Levi his hand, then leads him away when Levi accepts it. The wire stays where it is, safely sandwiched between their forearms.

Day seven

Levi waits for Dr. DeLuca to come in to work for almost an hour, stood in front of the door of the residents’ lounge, staring at the wall blankly and twirling the wire around his fingers.

It’s almost over. Soon he’s going to be free from this piece of plastic, and it’ll hopefully be a while before he has to do another central line on a patient.

Part of him thinks he’s going to miss it. He doesn’t listen to that part.

“Schmitt, did you fall asleep sitting up?”

The sudden voice startles Levi. He looks at the door with wide eyes and, sure enough, Dr. DeLuca is standing there looking at him with a raised eyebrow and an amused smile.

“I have this,” Levi says dumbly, lifting the wire in front of him.

DeLuca looks at it, then back at Levi, then back at the wire. “Okay?”

“You told me to take it with me wherever I went for a week,” Levi reminds him.

The expression on DeLuca’s face changes immediately, going from confused to smug in a split second.

“Did you?” he asks.

Levi stands up and walks over to DeLuca, holding the wire out in front of him like it’s a bomb about to go off. DeLuca watches it without making any attempt at taking it. Levi follows the line of his eyes.

The wire has seen better days; it’s bent irreparably in so many different places that it looks more like a spring than a wire, but it’s served its purpose more than well enough. Levi silently says goodbye to it, then places it on the closest bench and leaves it there.

He’s feeling way too emotional about this.

“I thought you would give up after a day, at most,” DeLuca chuckles.

It’s not what Levi was expecting him to say, and it kind of stings if he’s being honest, but he decides in that moment that he doesn’t feel like dealing with that today.

He stands straight, looks DeLuca in the eye and smiles in the most charming way he knows.

“Have a nice day, doctor,” he nods.

DeLuca moves aside and lets Levi make his grand exit through the door.

Satisfied smile on his face and pep in his step, Levi heads down the hallway, headed for the E.R. to hopefully catch an incoming trauma. Another taller, larger body falls into step with him.

“Are we finally free?” Nico asks, feigning nonchalance.

Levi rolls his eyes, but still hooks his hand around Nico’s elbow and quickens his pace to catch up with Nico’s way longer legs.

“We’re free,” he confirms.

Nico pumps his fist in the air and whoops loudly. Levi shushes him, but he’s also laughing way too hard. They walk together until they reach the elevator, finally leaving the wire behind.

Levi kind of never wants to look at another one again, but he lets himself forget about that as a gurney gets wheeled in and Nico goes in full trauma mode.

Back to work, preferably wireless.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, let me know with a comment or hit me up on [Tumblr](https://shesbreathless.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
